Bloomberg: ‘To Be Amazoned Means to Have Your Business Crushed Because the Company Got into Your Industry’

In an article Wednesday, Bloomberg claimed “Amazon” has become a verb, with “Amazoned” now meaning “to have your business crushed because the company got into your industry.”

“Amazon makes no sense. It’s the most befuddling, illogically sprawling, andv—vto a growing sea of competitors — flat-out terrifying company in the world,” Bloomberg claimed. “It sells soap and produces televised soap operas. It sells complex computing horsepower to the U.S. government and will dispatch a courier to deliver cold medicine on Christmas Eve. It’s the third-most-valuable company on Earth, with smaller annual profits than Southwest Airlines Co., which as of this writing ranks 426th.”

Bloomberg then added, “The company has grown so large and difficult to comprehend that it’s worth taking stock of why and how it’s left corporate America so thoroughly freaked out.”

“Executives at the biggest U.S. companies mentioned Amazon thousands of times during investor calls last year, according to transcripts — more than President Trump and almost as often as taxes. Other companies become verbs because of their products: to Google or to Xerox. Amazon became a verb because of the damage it can inflict on other companies,” they explained. “To be Amazoned means to have your business crushed because the company got into your industry. And fear of being Amazoned has become such a defining feature of commerce, it’s easy to forget the phenomenon has arisen mostly in about three years.”

“For many companies, perhaps what’s scariest is that Amazon has lots of room to grow, even in retail,” Bloomberg concluded. “Just as it was difficult to predict that Amazon would buy upscale supermarkets, it’s tricky to be certain which industries the company might torch next.”